


Hatefuck: A Love Story

by centrifuge



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Feels, HP: EWE, Hate Sex, Kittens, M/M, Romantic Comedy, Smut, Wandless Magic, apparently, everybody loves maths, maths - Freeform, maths are comforting, people who are terrible at relationships, snape can apparently go fuck himself, uncontrolled outbursts of wanking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-26
Updated: 2013-11-26
Packaged: 2018-01-02 17:08:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1059394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/centrifuge/pseuds/centrifuge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s only so much you can hate someone before the wanking sets in. You know, the word “hatefuck” flits across your mind like a red, wanton word and the next thing your eyes cross and you’ve got your hand down your pants. And the images are a lot hotter than you thought possible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hatefuck: A Love Story

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in one sitting, completely high out of my mind and loving every minute of it. I apologize for NOTHING.

There’s only so much you can hate someone before the wanking sets in. You know, the word “hatefuck” flits across your mind like a red, wanton word and the next thing your eyes cross and you’ve got your hand down your pants. And the images are a lot hotter than you thought possible. You hate your vivid imagination and lively subconscious.

At least it’s not Voldemort, at any rate.

 

After graduation, a brief blitz through the world of Quidditch abruptly halted by a disqualifying knee injury, and several months not leaving the flat whilst indulging in a prolonged but much deserved sulk, Harry Potter found himself once again dreading daily contact with Professor Snape. Dumbledore had roused himself from the grave to kick Harry’s ass back to Hogwarts, where Snape’s tenure as Headmaster was in its prime. Harry’d had a letter from him, written in the most pained-looking handwriting possible, claiming he needed a Defense Against the Dark Arts professor for the coming year, and since the curse showed no sign of letting up, he was running short on qualified candidates. Apparently it had come down to a decision between Harry and Neville Longbottom, who’d flatly refused and went back to being an incredibly dashing Auror and prize-winning hobbyist gardener. He had sent Snape some very nice samples of his harvest, leaving Snape musing about the possible subtext of receiving three-foot-long courgettes and aubergines and a message, in script, stating _go fuck yourself._

Neville had finally found his nerve at last, it seemed.

Harry, having nothing better to do with his time, accepted, with the postscript _but you can still go fuck yourself._

 

So it was with two full barrels of self-righteousness and half-cocked drunkenness that Harry decamped in his new quarters and prepared himself for several months of uninterrupted vindictiveness.

But let’s be honest here: Harry was still British, so he wasn’t about to go brashly have it out with him. He’d have to be subtle. Devious. As sly and double-dealing as Snape himself – no! worse, even! –

 

And that’s when the word happened. And an erection. And an unstoppable chain of highly unlikely events that did, despite their utter improbability, most assuredly happen.

 

Snape was still teaching potions, despite being Headmaster, primarily because he didn’t think anyone could do a better job of it. Flitwick would be teaching charms until the end of time, Granger had taken over Arithmancy practically by force, and the effects of her radical new teaching methods had transformed the field overnight. The millennium problems had all been solved within ten months’ of her placement, none of them by Granger herself. She was proud of her students, many of them bright muggle-borns like herself. A veritable Feynman sorceress if there was one.

But Snape was in his early forties, just hitting his stride as a wizard, and wanted to make the most of it. It almost made up for the gray starting to show in his temples. To minimize the effect he simply swept his hair back and tied it, ignoring the inner voice telling him not to be so vain. He detested vanity above all else, and preferred dissociation to socializing, so little harm done there. As far as he was concerned, he was living on borrowed time after the life he’d led, so best not to get caught up in little things like looks. He did believe in fitness, and given his injuries, it was in his best interests to stay in shape, preventing further and greater injury in his declining years. He’d also instituted the muggle practice of establishing places within the walls of Hogwarts where the students and staff could participate in free forms of exercise, not confined only to Quidditch, which wasn’t for everyone.

In short, Snape’s life was as good as could be expected, until the meager list of candidates for Defense teachers was brought to his attention. When Potter’s response came, he burned the letter in a fit of accidental magic by glaring at it. Then he sighed and put his head on his desk, preparing for the next year to be a complete hell.

Just one year, he thought. I’ll only ever have to suffer the one year of him, and then we’ll never be forced to cross paths again.

 

For some reason, he’d still suspected Potter to look as ever: skinny, brainless, bed-headed, owlish, and quite a bit shorter.

Potter was now slightly overweight, looking sharp and guarded, free from the tyranny of spectacles, shaved-headed, and eye-to-eye with him. He had a two-week beard.

“Potter,” Snape squinted, his head tilting slightly. “Have you become a Chav?”

Potter answered in the affirmative by decking him.

 

“I’m actually very sorry,” Potter said, healing his broken nose with a quick spell. He sounded surprised with himself. “I hadn’t seen you in years, and I think I’d been holding that in for a long time.”

“You and Longbottom,” Snape muttered, dabbing at his upper lip with his sleeve. He gathered himself from the floor of his office, shook out his robes, and sat back down at his desk. “Please, have a biscuit.”

“I’m really so sorry,” Potter said. “Please don’t fire me.”

“You said that already,” Snape pointed to the tin of biscuits, and Potter unconsciously took one. “And I can’t fire you.”

Potter unconsciously took a bite of the biscuit, mutely asking the obvious question.

“I can’t,” Snape bit out, “As everyone qualified is either too busy, or wants me to fuck myself with a giant aubergine.”

“What?” Potter said, his eyes briefly unfocusing.

“Nothing!” He snapped, also snapping the quill in his hand and every quill in the room in another fit of accidental magic. Even Potter looked impressed.

Distracted, Harry opened his satchel. “You even got the ones you didn’t know about,” he said in an amused tone. “I haven’t been that angry in _years._ ”

Snape just frowned at him. Frowned harder.

“All I did was hit you,” Potter said with a little smile. “You can’t control your magic. You hate me. So. Much.”

“Potter!” Snape shouted, and all of the biscuits in the tin instantly incinerated themselves. “Get out of my office!”

Mercifully, Potter fled. Snape was just glad his library was still intact.

Harry didn’t even make it to his rooms before he absolutely had to reach into his robes and fist his cock. He leaned against the cool stone of the hallway, tremendously grateful the term hadn’t yet started.

Snape whisked silently toward his potions laboratory, stopping short when he heard the muffled sound of Potter’s voice. He peeked around the corner.

Potter was hunched against the wall with his back to him, one hand clawing at the wall above his head, the other hidden by his body, although from the way he was moving it was obvious what he was doing. Snape wrinkled his nose. Why was Potter wanking in the hallway? Didn’t he have even a shred of decency? Hopefully he wouldn’t do this during the school year.

His train of thought was terminally derailed at the half-growl, half-wimper Potter made, and then the sight of him biting his fist to muffle his groan as he came. He rested his forehead on the wall, then banged it against the wall a couple times for good measure, before spelling himself clean and walking off again. There was a slight drag of his left leg when he walked, Snape noticed. Probably that career-ending knee injury he’d heard about.

What a strange person, Snape mused, turning and heading into his lab for some light reading.

  
  


Two weeks into the term Potter arrived in Snape’s office for the second time, summoned for his bi-weekly progress meeting with the Headmaster. Dumbledore’s portrait waved at him, but had his mouth too full of candy to say anything. Potter noticed the box of sweets that had been lovingly painted into the picture.

“Was that always there?” Potter pointed. “I don’t remember it being in the original portrait.”

“I had it added,” Snape shuffled some papers and glanced over at the painting. “It keeps him quiet for longer periods. If and when he finishes it, he’s welcome to request something else.”

Dumbledore gave Harry a thumbs up and smiled. Potter raised his eyebrows, smiled, and turned to Snape. “So, what was it you wanted to see me about?”

“Three things. One: shave. You are a wizard and you have no excuse.”

“All right.”

“Two:  you will submit each month’s curriculum to me two weeks prior for approval, and student evaluations on a weekly basis.”

“Reasonable.”

“Three: there’s a controlled-weight system and 300-metre track on the third floor, east wing, which I believe is the closest to your quarters.”

“Hey.” Potter adjusted his robes. “I know I gained a little weight but I didn’t think it would discredit my teaching skills.” His eyes flashed, which Snape hadn’t known was possible without his glasses.

“I’m not interested in your weight, Professor Potter.” His eyes flicked up and down Potter’s body, unimpressed either way. “I know you have a lingering injury to your knee that requires retraining the ligaments and musculature surrounding it to function properly.” He stood and turned around, facing out the window. “When my leg was severed and reattached I found it useful in regaining my gait.”

“You had your leg off?” Potter asked, in a rather rude but guileless way. “You what?”

“I’ve had lots of bits off, thanks to the witch Lestrange.” He turned around, glaring at Potter to ward off the thought he knew was forming. “They have _all_ been reattached.”

Potter raised his eyebrows again in that infuriating way of his, and as Snape’s vision flashed red, the candy in Dumbledore’s painting went up in bright blue flames, settling into a pile of painted ash.

Potter was awed. “I didn’t even know you could _do_ that,” he said sort of breathlessly. He squirmed and smiled sheepishly at Snape.

“Out!” He bellowed. Potter obeyed.

 

Over the next couple months his interactions with Potter were minimal and blissfully short, but he did notice not only that Potter’s knee seemed to be improving, but that he was also visibly toning up. Not interested in his weight, indeed. Snape snorted.

 

Snape had had a similar revelation upon Potter’s arrival. This wasn’t the snotty child he’d been used to. This was a man. A fuckable man. With enough stubble to make the mere thought of it prickling against the flesh between his cock and his thigh cause spontaneous displacement of his blood from north to south.

It was just a shame that he hated the man with a passion that bordered on pathological.

The words fuck and hate bounced around in his head throughout the day until they stuck together and fluttered, like a golden Snitch, before his mind’s eye.

And stayed there.

_Hatefuck._

He wasn’t clear on the schematics of the thing, but he knew it had to be a thing. He spent an inordinately long time thinking about it, and when he was done, he was in his bed, there were three locking charms on the door, and his hand was down his pants, which were tellingly sticky.

Like a bloody teenager, he thought, before nodding off, hand in pants and all.

 

He had been minding his own business, spending a leisurely Saturday shoring up Poppy’s supply of healing potions, starting with taking inventory of her current stock. He was up to M, with potions for menses (stock very low) and migraines and meningitis (completely stocked) when Potter rushed into the supply closet, locked the door behind him, then cast six different locking charms, transfigured the supply closet door into plain wall, and bound it all with a potentially dark blood spell. He bit his finger to seal it, before turning around, then throwing himself back against the erstwhile door when he spied Snape.

“Hello,” Snape drawled. “Is Professor Granger on a tear again?”

Potter hissed at him for silence and crossed the space between them in one bound, stifling the Headmaster with his hand. “Yes,” he whispered. Snape glared at him. “Please be quiet.” Snape rolled his eyes. Potter pressed his hand more firmly against Snape’s mouth. “Normally I’d just let you run off at the mouth but I can’t take another minute of her dogmatic agenda.” Snape nodded, and Potter dropped his hand.

“You’d _let me?_ ” Snape mouthed viciously at him in the dim light from a set of phosphorescent potions for nightmares. Potter almost retorted, but froze when they heard footsteps in the infirmary.

Snape licked his lips and tasted blood – Potter’s blood, from his bitten finger. Snape instinctively reached for healing salve and unscrewed the pot, taking a swipe of the ointment. He took Potter’s hand and rubbed it into his fingertip with his thumb, gently. The bleeding slowed and stopped, and the flesh knit together. He let go of Potter’s hand and looked up.

It was so quiet in the space between them that he could hear Potter’s heart going like a jack hammer. And his own. And the smell of toast on Potter’s breath. And the cleft of darkness between his bitten lips. And the enormity of Potter’s pupils in the near-dark. He was acutely aware of all these things.

Which was why he wasn’t sure how he missed the point when Potter had dropped to his knees, silently, pressing a tentative hand, then his face, nuzzling against the crotch of his trousers. He also had apparently missed the point his erection had become hard enough to hammer nails.

The sound of Granger’s footsteps faded and the door to the infirmary opened and swung shut, and Snape didn’t dare to breathe. Then Potter moved.

Oh, how he moved. He opened his mouth, then tilted his head to wrap his lips around Snape’s cock, as well as one could through trousers. Then, ever so carefully, let Snape feel his teeth.

Snape made a noise between a groan and a laugh, and slid down the wall. He splayed his legs around Potter, who was already hard at work destroying his favorite grey trousers in order to get at his cock, which seemed equally eager to be free.

“This doesn’t mean anything,” Potter warned, cock in hand.

“I know,” Snape said, then, gentler, “you’ll hurt your knee.”

“Shut up,” Potter said, then swallowed him down to the hilt.

Snape tried to grasp his hair, then growled in frustration as his fingers skittered over that too-short, still prickly thatch that was slowly growing in. He had to settle for stroking the shell of Potter’s ear, and then his neck. Potter moaned, the vibration reverberating through his pelvic cradle as he felt the exhalation of warm air against his hip. He watched through a glittering haze as Potter worked his jaw, and the shape of his jaw was just so, and it was too much…

Before he could come, he pulled Potter bodily up to him, knocking him off balance and sprawling them both on the floor.

“Don’t think this means anything,” He growled before half-kissing, half-biting Potter’s lips. Potter rolled on top of him, slotting his cock into the space between Snape’s own and his thigh, and rocked his hips. He had his hand around Snape and rubbed his thumb over the head, then bent down to kiss Snape again, but this time less messily and more thoroughly.

“Fuck,” Potter said, as he came.

“Fuck,” Snape agreed, and came as well. Precisely one-third of the potions in the supply closet exploded.

Well, he’d wanted a way to pass the time.

He left Potter wondering at the mess and fled to his quarters to change his pants.

 

 

The next time it happened in his office. He wasn’t sure which one of them had started it, but he was fucking Potter open across his desk when former Headmistress Moore poked her head meekly around the frame and reminded him he had a brief speech to give at dinner.

“Don’t move,” he ordered Potter as he pulled down his robes and apparated to the Great Hall.

He was back minutes later with a loud crack, and Potter said, “I thought it was impossible to apparate on the grounds of Hogwarts.”

“I’m the Headmaster, Harry.” He smiled, palming the ass still spread open on his desk. “I can do whatever the fuck I please.”

  
  


“I hate you so fucking much,” Harry said breathlessly, biting Snape’s shoulder. Snape kept him pinned up against the wall, rolling his hips to fuck into him with quick, rhythmic thrusts. His hair had grown out enough that it was starting to fall into his eyes, and Snape buried his nose in it, gripping Harry’s thighs and thrusting harder in response. Harry arched his neck, thudding his head against the wall has he came.

“I have always loathed you,” Snape snarled, nipping at his bottom lip and being rewarded with a mind-shattering snog and orgasm combination.

 

“Sev? Sever? Verus? Rus?” Harry padded around Snape’s bedroom, retrieving his clothes from their various landing places. “What do your friends call you?”

“I don’t have any friends,” Snape said, not moving from his bed. He couldn’t if he wanted to. He was so shagged out he might never move again. Imagine the house elves’ surprise when he ordered breakfast like this.

“Liar,” Harry said definitively, buttoning and zipping his trousers. “You’re an old queen and everybody loves you.”

“What did you just say?”

“Mm? Nothing.” Harry toed on his shoes. “I’ll be a little late to the staff meeting, I have to give detention tonight.” He hesitated at the door, looked back and called, “Hate you.”

“Hate you too,” murmured Snape to the closed door.

 

Harry tried to think of the opposite of _hatefuck_. Lovesex? Then he just sat there crying with laughter, not explaining, while Ron quietly informed the bartender to cut off his drinks. Harry was still quietly laughing to himself as Ron helped him onto his sofa, and threw a blanket over him.

“Goodnight, mate,” Ron called as he went up the stairs.

 _Lovelove_ , he thought helplessly, and giggled himself to sleep.

Harry woke up when Ron tiptoed through the living room with his running shoes in hand. Harry offered to go with him. If Ron was surprised at all, he kept it to himself, other than a nod, and a “Cheers. Got an extra pair of shoes in the mudroom.”

 

“Ron,” Harry said after a mile in the pre-dawn stillness. ”How did you know you were in love with Hermione?”

Ron slowed until he was eventually at a stop. He looked out across the neighborhood below them, the lights just coming on in homes and shops. “I dunno, mate. It was just a fact. Like I’d read it in a textbook. Like maths.”

Harry asked Hermione if love had anything to do with maths, and she got a little wibbly and misty-eyed, and said yes. Harry was soon to discover how deeply love for maths ran in Hermione.

He regretted his decision to ask her over the next several hours.

“I guess what I mean is, how did you know you were in love with Ron?” Harry asked as they had tea and biscuits at two in the morning. “You know, was it like maths? Like there was only one answer and this was it?”

“Not exactly,” Hermione said, dunking her biscuit in her tea thoughtfully. “It was more like he stuck around me so long that life became impossible without him.” She abandoned the biscuit in the tea and smiled distantly. “He became essential to my definition of a happy life. So, to answer your question, at first, no. Then… eventually, yes.”

“I need more time,” Harry said, again neglecting to explain. Hermione went to firecall Ron in the middle of the night, and Harry left to return to his own quarters.

 

“Dumbledore? Are you there?” Harry whispered to his room in the dark. “It’s me, Harry.”

“Harry, m’boy,” Dumbledore twinkled into existence, his ghost floating to rest at the foot of Harry’s bed. “How are things corporeal these days?”

“Meaty,” Harry sat up and rubbed his head. “Albus, how did you know you were in love with, er, someone? Were you? In love? I mean—“

“He and I had a… complicated relationship,” Albus said quietly. “We were young, powerful, and crazy. Crazy in love, or just crazy? Both, I tell you. Both! But he turned out to be evil,” he finished sadly.

“Did he abuse you?”  Harry said with concern.

“He tried to become immortal and rule the universe,” Dumbledore frowned. “We just wanted different things out of life.”

“We are enjoying our death though,” he added. “We’ve chosen a very lovely meadow in Elysia, and there are plenty of underworlds that need ruling. We each do our own thing. I knit and sell socks to the Great Cosmic Centipedes; he volunteers as an evil overlord.”

“The Great Cosmic what?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Dumbledore smiled. “What matters is what you do with the time you have left. And also,” he added as he began to fade away, “Don’t get caught by the students. It’s just better for all involved.”

Harry was more confused than ever.

 

Snape found him in the library, teetering on top of a stack of heavy tomes in the restricted section. “You are a wizard, you know. You could just summon the book you want.”

“I don’t know what I’m looking for yet,” Harry dusted off the spines of the next five books and floated his candlelight orb closer.

“Obviously.”

“When are we going digital?” Harry sneezed, gripping the shelf for support.

“Never.”

 

They fucked in the library stacks, papercuts everywhere, pages indelibly limned in blood. Harry came so hard he bit purple marks into Snape’s shoulder, and left halfmoons from his nails down his sides. Snape’s hand untangled with great difficulty from Harry’s now-shaggy hair. Snape had stubble burn on his cheeks and his hip but he did not _care_ even though he should write Harry up for not shaving, he could not bring himself to mind. As Harry shuddered through his orgasm, kicking out and sending a book flying, all of the books threw themselves from the shelves around them, burying them under a mountain of reference manuals as Snape came, hard, possibly the hardest he had in his life.

“This never used to happen,” Snape complained. “I pride myself on my control.”

“This is the hottest sex of my life,” Harry said, and when Snape looked abruptly down at him, he avoided eye contact. “Did I say something? I can’t remember.”

Snape snorted, nudged up to keep himself inside Harry, and made no attempt to get off of him for a very long time. Harry kept his eyes closed, and every now and then he would lift the few micrometers necessary to press a sweet kiss to Snape’s mouth, and to get an equally sweet kiss in return. He slid the band out of Snape’s hair and let it fall like a curtain around them.

“Oh,” Harry said. “I found my book.”

 

They rubbed salve on each others’ papercuts and lolled naked in Harry’s bed, content to do nothing in particular until the purple dawn crept up to their windows. Harry flipped through his book and frowned a lot; Snape lay on his back and wrote theoretical potion recipes in the air with his wand.

Eventually, Harry yawned and closed the book. “I’m shagged out. If you want to sleep here it’s fine.”

Snape shrugged one shoulder in response, still muttering ingredients to himself. Harry realized he was talking in his sleep.

“Help yourself,” Harry said with a private smile, pulling the duvet up to Snape’s chin.

“Kitten fluffybugs,” Snape replied, snuggling into the duvet and sighing contentedly.

Harry managed to hold in his unmanly squeeing until he’d cast Muffliato on himself.

 

“Harry, is this milk in my tea? Ugh, I despise you,” Snape said, looking down at the tray.

“Oh no, sorry – that’s my tea. Yours has the lemon.”

“Hmpf.” He picked up the cup, sniffed it, then took a sip.

“Love you too,” Harry added from the closet.

“What?” Snape slopped tea in his lap and winced.

“Loathe you too,” Harry repeated, pulling a shirt over his head, mussing up his hair.

And then Snape just _had_ to touch it, and then snog the man, and then drag him to the floor and divest him of his clothing, effectively making him late to teach his class, and arriving not only out of breath, but flushed, irrevocably mussed, and conspicuously wearing a Slytherin tie.

 

“Severus,” Dumbledore said in that tone he used. No one could resist the tone.

“I don’t know what’s happening!” He burst out, throwing up his hands and pacing his office. “It started out as a thing we did because we hated each other.”

“Sure it did,” Dumbledore said soothingly.

Snape glared. “Don’t make me Legillimens you, old man. I have proof.”

“Things said in the heat of passion—“

“No! Ugh—“

“Are not admissible evidence,” the ghost rambled serenely. “In any court.”

“It just doesn’t make any sense. Something doesn’t add up. I need maths. Maths comfort me. When things don’t add up, it’s—“

“Severus.”

“No—“

“Severus.”

“I can’t—“

“Severus.”

“He’d never—“ Snape stopped pacing. “I don’t even know what it _means._ ”

“What what means?”

“Don’t make me say it,” he said sullenly. “I’m not ready for that yet.”

But he traced a heart in the air with his wand and felt like a complete fool.

 

“You complete and utter fool!” He screamed, having come as soon as the deafening boom rocked the entire castle. “What have you done?”

Harry was on the floor, burned and singed and cut from the glass shards that had formerly resided in unison in the high arching window frames of the Defense Against Dark Arts classroom. He smiled eyelashlessly at Snape, which was disconcerting. “The students are out for the year and it was perfectly safe. No one was hurt.”

“ _You’re_ hurt,” Snape said with venom. “And what idiotic plan have you failed miserably at this time?”

“I guess we’ll see by autumn,” Potter said by way of explanation. Poppy healed his injures, which were fairly minor, in his defense. He fixed the windows and spent the rest of the summer mending the wards around the classroom, as well as the rest of the castle. Snape avoided him completely, still feeling the explosion in his chest when he woke, still seeing Potter when he closed his eyes, still reeling from the flash of overwhelming emotion that wouldn’t let him have any peace. How could anybody fall in love if that’s what the fear felt like as a consequence? It gripped at him like panic and dragged him into a dark state, feeling helpless and weak and old and generally very depressed.

 

Potter left two weeks before the new school year to visit France with Ron and Hermione. And _Charlie_. Snape cloistered himself in his office and prepared himself to grovel to Neville Longbottom.

“Charlie, have you ever fallen in love?”

“A couple times.” They sat on the roof balcony of their hotel, drinking Beaujolais from the bottle and sharing secret cigarettes.

They were quiet for a while, and Ron wandered up, very drunk, and put his arm around Harry’s neck, headlock-like, and kissed the top of his head. He stole a drag from his cigarette, then wandered away. Charlie was amused.

“You three are close,” he said, tilting the neck of the bottle to Harry, who took it.

“You have _no_ idea,” he replied, taking a long pull. They watched the lights flow under the Arc du Triomphe and passed time in companionable silence.

“It’s the most thrilling thing in the world,” Charlie said at last. “Falling in love. And terrifying. And confusing. So confusing,” he trailed off.

“So how do you know?”

“Know you’re in love?” Charlie shook his head and smiled at him. “Harry, take a look in the mirror.”

This was not the straightforward answer he was looking for, but he tried it anyway. He tried to be objective.

He looked good. Not to be narcissistic, but the last time he took a good long look in the mirror it was from the bottom of a well and he’d grown a hipster beard while he was there. Things had not looked bright then. But he looked at himself. He liked who he’d become. He liked his life. He really… loved it all, actually.

But he especially loved Snape.

 

On the first day of school, Headmaster Snape introduced Professor Longbottom, and the students all looked around at each other.

“Herbology Master,” Snape said. “He’ll be giving you your OWLs in Herbology this year, so impress me.”

Potter skidded to the end of the grand table and sat down. Neville peered down the table and waved at him. Potter waved back.

“It was rearranged last minute, but we welcome back Professor Potter as Defense Master.” Snape looked at Potter, who smiled tentatively. “Professor Potter has succeeded where all others have failed, and has managed to remove the curse on the position. He has been offered tenure here, and has accepted.”

There was general cheering, and then the clamor of enthusiastic eating, and when it was all over Snape took Potter back to his room and fucked him up against the bedpost, then on the floor, and with tears blurring his vision, buried his face in Potter’s neck when he came, howling, and Potter held him.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Snape said, sitting against the wall a little later. Potter had pulled the duvet off the bed and wrapped himself in it, propped up between the wall and the nightstand.

“I do, now,” Potter said, and his eyes were fierce, despite being surrounded by fluffy down and linen embroidered with tiny snakes.

“I’m so much older than you.”

“You’re really not.”

Snape thought about that and eventually conceded the point.

 

And even if we,” Snape argued, refusing to finish the sentence, “What then?”

“We could get a cat?” Harry finished shaving and looked over his shoulder. He smiled.

“I do like cats,” Snape grumbled.

“You like me, too.”

Snape fiddled with the tea service and grumbled that he did.

“I love you, you know. I worked it out. I didn’t know it at first, but I got it eventually. Like maths.”

“I do like maths,” Snape grumbled.

“I know,” Harry said, and kissed him.

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
